BANGKOK — Thai warplanes and artillery pounded Cambodian positions and border villages along the Thailand-Cambodia border after a deadly overnight clash, killing at least one Thai soldier and four Cambodian civilians and forcing mass evacuations on both sides, Dec. 9, 2025. The strikes, which Thailand says were launched in self-defense after its troops came under rocket and drone fire and after it accused Cambodia of massing heavy weapons and laying new landmines, shattered a fragile cease-fire brokered just six weeks ago by former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Evacuations widen along the Thailand-Cambodia border.
Thai army officials said fighter jets hit what they described as Cambodian artillery sites, depots, and command posts in at least five locations after an initial overnight barrage along the frontier killed a soldier and wounded several others in Si Sa Ket and Surin provinces. Cambodian authorities reported four civilian deaths in Oddar Meanchey and Preah Vihear provinces and dozens of injuries, insisting their forces were holding fire even as shells landed near villages and pagodas, according to a detailed Reuters dispatch.
Thailand’s Interior Ministry has ordered more than 385,000 residents in four northeastern provinces to be ready to evacuate or already move, and local officials say roughly 50,000 people are now sleeping in schools, temples, and sports halls. On the Cambodian side, authorities say at least 1,100 families have been moved to safer areas. At the same time, video and photos show families loading motorbikes and farm trucks with mattresses, livestock, and sacks of rice, a scene described in reporting by The Guardian.
Fresh explosions were reported Tuesday morning as both sides accused the other of restarting the fighting, with Thailand saying its troops were again targeted and Cambodia alleging “inhumane and brutal” aggression. A live blog by Al Jazeera cited Thai claims of at least three soldiers killed in the latest rounds of fighting. At the same time, Cambodian officials said several more civilians died when shells and air-dropped munitions struck border communities.
Bangkok insists the offensive is a necessary show of force after it accused Cambodia of planting new anti-personnel mines inside Thai territory and mobilizing rocket systems and drones near the line of control. Thai army chief Gen. Chaipruak Doungprapat said the goal was to “cripple” Cambodia’s military capability for years, and Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told viewers Thailand would “not tolerate violations of its sovereignty” or hold talks. At the same time, he believed its borders were threatened. Cambodia’s influential former leader Hun Sen has urged his country’s troops to avoid being “pulled into retaliation” but warned that Cambodia reserves the right to defend itself, according to Anadolu Agency and other outlets.
Regional mediators fear the collapse of the Trump-brokered cease-fire, struck in late July after a five-day artillery war that killed at least 48 people and displaced some 300,000 civilians, could drag Southeast Asia’s security bloc deeper into crisis. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who helped negotiate the deal alongside Chinese diplomats, has urged both sides to step back, warning that renewed conflict along the Thailand-Cambodia border risks “unravelling the careful work” that went into the truce. At the same time, the U.N. secretary-general has appealed for an immediate halt to airstrikes.
A long-standing dispute over temples keeps the Thailand-Cambodia border volatile.
The latest clashes are the fiercest since July but follow a well-worn pattern along the Thailand-Cambodia border, where much of the 817-kilometer frontier remains poorly demarcated, and nationalist politics on both sides inflame local incidents. An earlier Reuters Q&A from 2011 traced the dispute to colonial-era maps and rival claims over the Preah Vihear, Ta Moan, and Ta Krabey temple complexes, noting that control of the surrounding highlands carries strategic and symbolic weight far beyond their crumbling stone walls.
Those tensions exploded repeatedly between 2008 and 2011, when firefights, artillery duels, and rocket barrages around Preah Vihear and nearby temples killed scores of soldiers and civilians and forced thousands to flee into temporary camps. In one clash in April 2011, Thai and Cambodian troops exchanged fire near Ta Moan and Ta Krabey, triggering evacuations on both sides and prompting appeals for restraint that echo today’s diplomatic statements, as described in a contemporaneous Reuters report from the front line.
Analysts say the combination of a still-undefined boundary, landmines, and powerful militaries operating in proximity means even minor skirmishes can quickly spiral, especially when leaders feel domestic pressure to project strength. For villagers sheltering in schools and temples scattered along the Thailand-Cambodia border, the immediate question is less about geopolitics than whether they will be allowed to return home before the next round of artillery fire.
